There are always inherent perils in using industries like moving companies to haul your life’s possessions from Point A to Point B.  Out of the many times we’ve moved, we only moved ourselves once and that was enough.  It is absolutely worth the money to pay someone else to lug your stuff around and move it up and down the stairs.  The one time we did move ourselves, with the help of our friends, it took way longer than normal and we inadvertently ripped couches, scraped doorways, and had troubles fitting everything in the moving van.  With movers, all those problems go away.

That being said, movers are only as good as their owners and employees.  Like any business, there are shysters, conmen, ex-convicts, and general pond scum that inhabit every occupation known to man.  We’ve had good encounters with the movers we’ve used down here in Atlanta (Peachtree Movers) and we recommended them to my wife’s mom, who was moving to the same town as we live in (previously she was about 20 minutes away).  We have heard nightmare stories from friends down here about moving companies doing things like taking homeless people off the street to be the movers for that day and then not paying them for the day’s work when they drop them back off where they picked them up.

For whatever reason, her mom used another moving company (Trinity Movers) and assumed all was well when she made the reservation.  Moving day came and the movers were several hours late.  (Note - I am not at her place on this day.  My story comes the following day.)  When they finally came, only 2 of the 3 guys were doing any work and they took absolutely forever.  The “head” guy had an attitude from the start and it would only get worse.  The place was already packed and boxed and the only thing they had to do was cover the furniture with plastic wrap, blankets and tape.  After 5 hours and sundown coming along quickly, they were still several hours away from being done.  After the 8^th hour of “work”, the moving company called to say the debit machine wasn’t working (Scam Warning #1) and that she had to pay cash on the spot or they wouldn’t deliver.  She asked how she was supposed to get $1,000 cash on a Friday night when ATMs had a limit for each card.  She was told to find friends and family to give her the cash.  I’m not sure how she convinced them that she would pay them the next morning with cash but they supposedly set out to follow her to her new house.

As part of her initial agreement, they were to stop at our place to drop off a few pieces of furniture that she was giving us since it wouldn’t fit in her smaller town home.  On the way to our place they told her it would be an extra $75 to stop at our place (Scam Warning #2).  Since they had all her possessions, we didn’t really have a choice but to play by their game at this point.  As her mom turned onto I-285 (from I-85), she noticed the moving truck left the highway at the first available exit.  Now she has no idea where they are and they can’t get a hold of the moving company, as it always goes through an answering service (Scam Warning #3).

She drives to our place with her daughters and tries to contact the owner of the moving company.  He finally calls back and tries to lay the blame on her for not having cash (Scam Warning #4).  He then tries to get her to give him her debit card number (Scam Warning #5) but she wisely refuses, as you are liable for almost anything you lose to malfeasance with a debit card (unlike a credit card where you generally are only liable for $50).  Prior to this, she had called Gwinnett County and DeKalb County police to report that her moving van was missing with no notice but they both told her since she signed a contract, there was nothing they could do.  While on the phone with the owner, one of the police districts called back so she told him “Let me call you back. It’s the police on the other line.”  After another frustrating bout of “We can’t help you even though you’ve lost all your worldly possessions” talk with the local fuzz, she called the moving owner back, who had suddenly changed his tune.  He said the truck would be at our place in the morning at 7 AM and they would then go to her place after that.

Happy ending to this story, right?  Not a chance.  The drama hadn’t even begun.  We didn’t expect them to show up at 7 AM the next day, much less ever, as our research online that night showed that Trinity Movers was one of those places that was known to hold people’s possessions hostage and then say their stuff is in a storage locker and the fee is hundreds of dollars a day to hold it until they can come up with cash.  Obviously, hindsight is always 20/20 and while we could have harped on the fact that her mom didn’t use the owners we recommended, this was not the time for that discussion.  Even though it wasn’t my stuff on that truck, I felt horrible that someone was taking advantage of a single lady in her 50s and the police wouldn’t do anything about it.  Looking back on the whole sequence of events, it was obvious by the time they showed up that day and how long they took to load the truck that they had no intention of ever delivering her stuff that day to her new house.

Thankfully, they actually showed up at our place the next day just after 7 AM.  Unfortunately it was with the same moving crew from the day before.  The tension was palpable.

To be continued tomorrow…